Ohio woman, 100, has bank account that dates back to 1913

CHILLICOTHE — An Ohio woman who just turned 100 years old has taken customer loyalty to the extreme: She’s still using a bank savings account that’s been around almost as long as she has, since the year before World War I.

June Gregg recently mentioned to a friend that her account is the same one her father opened for her in January 1913, when she wasn’t even a year-and-a-half old. The friend told the people at Gregg’s small-town bank in southern Ohio.

“That perked my ears up, because I was like, ’1913?!’” said Doug Shoemaker, general manager of what’s now a Huntington National Bank branch in this community, 45 miles south of Columbus.

The bank’s investigation found out that not only was it the same account, but also that the account number changed only once, when Columbus-based Huntington acquired the plainly-named Savings Bank in the early 1980s, Shoemaker said.

Gregg still has the little blue passbook from when the account was opened with an initial deposit of $6.11. Her father, Gilbert, a farmer who grew corn, wheat and hay, was a Savings Bank customer and wanted his only daughter to learn thrift.

“That’s what he always taught us: to stay out of debt and save our money and not buy anything until we had the money to pay for it,” Gregg said in an interview.